Vancouver Fashion Week Is Back

This year's t'do is bigger than ever.

Kicking off November 1st, Vancouver Fashion Week, which has been known to be one of the sleepier of the Canadian fashion week events, had so many hopeful participants that they ended up having to turn people away, Global News reported.

“It’s truly great, we’re living a dream as of today,” producer Jamal Abdourahman told Global on Tuesday. "The industry is still small but I wanted to do it, I wanted to bring everyone here. It was the idea that I [fell] in love that I saw the energy and excitement from Paris Fashion Week, and I thought ‘wow we can bring this here’."

Although they insisted on having a lot of Canadian representation at Vancouver Fashion Week including Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal, there are also designers from Poland, Tokyo, Seoul, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles who are presenting their collections on runways during the six-day event.

Abdourahman said he hopes to find the next big cutting-edge designer and have them present their work at the next VFW. “By bringing those designers I’ll be able to pull in editors, real fashion editors, unique boutique buyers, and by doing so be able to inspire local designers to do the same,” he said. “It’s on the edge, underground, not commercial.”

In addition to hitting international radars this time around, Vancouver Fashion Week has also launched a brand new website (vanfashionweek.com) for the Spring / Summer 2012 season, complete with comprehensive image galleries of previous shows, full designer coverage, and a schedule of all the events associated with Vancouver Fashion Week.